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Wednesday Concurrent Sessions
See Sessions From:
Wednesday
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Thursday
W1
Test Management
One QA Team’s Journey from No Process to Continuous Feedback and Improvement
Jan Fish, Quality Metric, Inc.
You’ll learn a lot at STAREAST but do you know how you are going to systematically incorporate your new ideas into actions that will work back at the shop? Can you identify and evaluate the current state of your test process today? Do you really know if testing will be finished on time and within budget or is it just a best guess? Jan Fish shares the four year trek she and her team took through a maze of process improvement efforts that eventually elevated their testing organization to a controlled model with continuous improvement and feedback loops built-in to the process. Now, they can implement a change in test practices and easily measure its effects—good, bad, or indifferent. Although their focus was not on process improvement for its own sake, their efforts led to robust testing practices that are appraised to satisfy CMMI® Level 5.
CMMI® is a registered trademark of the Software Engineering Institute and Carnegie Mellon University.
Learn more about
Jan Fish
W2
Test Techniques
Creating a Risk-based Testing Strategy
Mary LeMieux-Ruibal, Sogeti USA
Mirkeya Capellán, Sogeti USA
An efficient test finds the most important defects as early as possible and at the lowest possible cost. The challenge for many of us is determining which tests are most important to execute and when to perform them. Mary LeMieux-Ruibal and Mirkeya Capellán introduce a simple approach for implementing a risk-based test strategy to ensure that test plans are well-organized and help find those “big” defects first. After an overview for determining test scope, objectives, and goals, Mary and Mirkeya explore the characteristics of effective tests and discuss how to use risk factors to prioritize and categorize test types. Based on TMap® Next testing methodology, Mary and Mirkeya outline easy-to-follow steps for determining the probability of a component failing and how to weigh the costs of a potential failure against the costs of executing tests to check the component. Join this session and learn how to quickly identify the most efficient strategy for test execution.
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Mary LeMieux-Ruibal,
Mirkeya Capellán
W3
Test Automation
Launch and Grow Your Test Automation
Paul Parsons, Neovest, Inc./JP Morgan
Situation: Your company needs test automation yesterday—but has little or no automation experience and a small budget. How do you quickly launch the automation project, create productive tests that make a difference, and pave the way for success in the ongoing development of test automation? Five years ago, Neovest began an automation journey that started with a single macro-based playback test and has evolved into a Java framework checking 21,000 test cases each night. Paul Parsons identifies the essentials of a test automation launch plan and describes how to assess your team’s skills to provide a crucial takeoff point. Paul guides you through the automation evolution spectrum—from record and playback to mature test frameworks—where you’ll learn the strengths and challenges of each stop along the way. Learn the most compelling metrics to track and how you can develop extensible automation today by knowing the design plan for tomorrow.
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Paul Parsons
W4
Agile Testing
Agile Testing Practices
Janet Gregory, DragonFire, Inc.
On agile teams, testing is an ongoing activity—not a phase or a role. Even today many agile development teams struggle with this concept. Janet Gregory explains how testing activities are included throughout the agile process and the highest value activities a tester can add to the team. Sharing her extensive work experience, Janet describes the importance of collaboration and simplicity in activities such as automation, acceptance test-driven development, and exploratory testing. Janet uses the agile testing quadrants model to provide a framework for identifying testing needs at all levels—user story, product feature, and project. As Janet presents this overview of agile testing practices, you’ll have an opportunity through discussions and exercises to understand how agile practices fit together. Learn how teams can organize themselves to complete story testing within each iteration while delivering quality products that satisfy business needs.
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Janet Gregory
W5
The Cloud
The New Mindset for Testing Cloud-based Applications
Charles Sterling, Microsoft
The “cloud” is the new kid on the block. So, how exactly does testing cloud-based applications differ from testing traditional applications? Do you have the right mindset and processes in place today to build and test high quality cloud-based applications? Charles Sterling answers these questions as he takes you on a journey to demystify the application lifecycle for cloud-based applications. He explains that you need a different mindset and a new set of processes and tools at each stage of the project cycle—planning, execution, release, and monitoring—to deliver high quality cloud-based applications. Based on his team's experience of building cloud services, Charles shares two specific examples—continuous integration and performance testing. Using these examples, he highlights the salient points of testing cloud-based applications and contrasts them with testing in the traditional world.
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Charles Sterling
W6
Special Topics
Concurrent Testing Games: Developers and Testers Working Together
Nate Oster, CodeSquads, LLC
The best software development teams find ways for programmers and testers to work closely together. These teams recognize that programmers and testers each bring their own unique strengths and perspectives to the project. However, working in agile teams requires us to unlearn many of the patterns that traditional development taught us. In this interactive session with Nate Oster, learn how to use the agile practice of concurrent testing to overcome common testing dysfunctions by having programmers and testers work together—rather than against each other—to deliver quality results throughout an iteration. Join Nate and practice concurrent testing with games that demonstrate just how powerfully the wrong approaches can act against your best efforts and how agile techniques can help you escape the cycle of poor quality and late delivery. Bring your other team members to this session and get the full effect of these revealing and inspiring games!
Learn more about
Nate Oster
W7
Test Management
Making Distributed Testing Teams Work
Jim Holmes, Telerik
Working with distributed testing teams can cause extreme frustration, slower releases, and even outright project failures. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. Although distributed teams can help you bring great value to your customers, you’ll need a new approach and different mindset to help the team work effectively. Jim Holmes walks you through critical aspects of distributed teams, including forming the team, finding tools for communication, smoothing workflow, and dealing with conflict. Together with Jim and other participants, discuss how a test team’s regular tasks can be split across the continent or the globe. Discover practical tips for communication methods (hint: email is always your last resort), finding tools that help foster good communication, and figuring out how to leverage time zones. Learn why it’s critical to commit to regular group meetings—even if it means sharing the pain of staying late or coming in early.
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Jim Holmes
W8
Test Techniques
Exploring Old-fashioned Test Design Techniques
Ruud Teunissen, Polteq Testing Services BV
Structured test design techniques have been around almost as long as testing itself. Some people even call them old school and out-of-date. Join Ruud Teunissen to examine why test design techniques have been and always will be useful to testers. Explore the well-known—and often ignored—principles of equivalence partitioning, boundary value analysis, condition/decision coverage, and operational use. Learn—or relearn—how to use these techniques no matter what application context you’re in: cloud, web services, end-to-end, or mobile. Structured test design techniques help you achieve predictable test coverage in a transparent and reusable way and focus testing based on risks within imposed constraints. Ruud helps you hone your craftsmanship for testing functionality, stress and performance testing, security testing, and usability testing. Get back to the basics with these “old-fashioned” test design techniques and enhance your test process with risk-based goals.
Learn more about
Ruud Teunissen
W9
Test Automation
Test Design for Automation
Hans Buwalda, LogiGear
Automation is often seen as a technical challenge—a matter of applying the right technology, tools, and smart programming talent. However, test automation often lags behind expectations and is difficult to manage and maintain, especially for large and complex systems. Hans Buwalda describes the role that the right choices for test design can play in automation success. Specifically, discover how good automated tests are not the same as the automation of good manual tests. Instead, you should break down your tests into modules—building blocks—where each has a clear scope and purpose. The test cases you design within each module need to reflect that scope and nothing more. Hans also explains how to separate the automation details from the test itself with keyword-based testing and describes how all these principles fit together to give you a better result with less time and effort.
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Hans Buwalda
W10
Agile Testing
You Can’t Spell Agile Testing without “ET”
Matt Barcomb, LeanDog Inc.
Lanette Creamer, Spark Quality, LLC
Do you ever get that creeping feeling there is more to agile testing than automating it? Have you wondered how you should test quality considerations beyond the story cards? Have you tried to use exploratory testing to bridge this gap, yet struggled with how to do it systematically in an agile context? If so, then what you need is a refreshing aromatic blend of exploratory and agile approaches. Lanette Creamer and Matt Barcomb share their ideas, experiences, and approaches on how agile teams can visualize and achieve quality at and beyond the story level. Learn what exploratory charters are and how to turn them into adaptive test ideas. Discover how agile teams can integrate exploratory testing techniques in an iterative incremental way, dynamically syncing with changes in the product. In addition, take away techniques to involve the whole team in setting priorities for quality initiatives and how to share the results of testing outcomes with stakeholders.
Learn more about
Matt Barcomb,
Lanette Creamer
W11
The Cloud
Integrating a Cloud Solution into Your Test Environment
Jim Trentadue, Gerdau
Cloud computing is THE big buzzword in the computing industry today. At Gerdau, they have chosen a cloud computing solution for their ongoing test environment strategy, employing an outsourced infrastructure vendor. Jim Trentadue explains why it is critical that sound testing environment practices be in place before moving to the cloud. He reviews steps his company took to migrate to a cloud-based environment—starting with a development sandbox, through various testing phases, and finally to the pre-production staging area before deploying to production. Jim reviews how to integrate cloud computing into your test management practices and concludes by highlighting thoughts of how cloud-based test environments can change testing process and procedures. With a cloud test environment, your organization can realize the benefits of strictly segregated code bases for quicker defect resolution. Join this session and take back the basics for implementing a cloud-based test environment that offers greater capability and flexibility with the same or lower costs.
Learn more about
Jim Trentadue
W12
Special Topics
Improving Quality: One Weekend at a Time
Michael Larsen, SideReel.com
What if there were a way that testers could practice the craft of testing and learn from mentors all over the world? A way they could tackle interesting problems with both novices and experienced testers participating together? A way completely free of cost? Sound like fantasy? It isn’t—if you are part of the “Weekend Testing” group. Michael Larsen demonstrates the methods used in Weekend Testing and discusses how you, too, can participate in these online sessions. Michael explains how to facilitate a Weekend Testing session yourself and shares some lessons he’s learned from dozens of Weekend Testing sessions in the past few years. Additionally, he shows how to take these same ideas and use them within your organization—even if you never participate in an official Weekend Testing session.
Learn more about
Michael Larsen
W13
Test Management
Testing in the DevOps World of Continuous Delivery
Manoj Narayanan, Cognizant Technology Solutions
DevOps is an increasingly popular approach to ensure that the delivered code is stable, capable of working as advertised, and available in production immediately. In a continuous delivery environment, the team members must be multi-skilled and able to handle all delivery activities—development, testing, and sysadmin tasks. Manoj Narayanan describes how testing is implemented through DevOps tenets and how it compares to the more familiar agile methodology. To leverage DevOps, it is critical that QA organizations and individual testers adapt to new responsibilities and skill sets. Learn how functional and regression test automation play a critical role in enabling testing organizations to play their part in the world of continuous delivery. Manoj concludes with an analysis of DevOps’ cultural impact on the testing organization and its interaction with other critical stakeholders including business, developers, operations, and end users. Take back details about new testing tools and practices that make this process work.
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Manoj Narayanan
W14
Test Techniques
Test Scenarios for Data-centric Systems
Sue Burk, EBG Consulting
Analysis and testing for data warehouse and business intelligence (BI) projects typically confirm that data was correctly mapped and can be accessed as intended. Such work is absolutely necessary, though not sufficient. Testing for data-centric systems also must prove that the data can be used as intended. Although behavior-modeling techniques that explore system usage aren’t typically part of business warehousing and BI toolkits, they are key to deployments that meet business expectations. Sue Burk shares her experiences in exploring business usage with use cases, scenarios, and user acceptance tests in support of data warehousing and BI analysis. Join Sue to learn how models that examine behavior can help you better specify tests for your data warehouse and BI projects. Find out how to reframe test objectives as business usage versus system usage to develop powerful insight into BI user and business needs.
Learn more about
Sue Burk
W15
Test Automation
Experience-driven Test Automation
Mark Fewster, Grove Consultants
Is this presentation yet another “approach” to test automation? No, it isn't. Instead, Mark Fewster shares his and others’ experiences with test automation so you can capitalize on good ideas and avoid useless ones. In their new book, Experiences of Test Automation, Mark Fewster and Dorothy Graham describe twenty-eight case histories of test automation across a rich variety of application domains, environments, and organizations. Mark highlights the common themes that span both management and technical issues—the influence managers have over test automation success and failure, the importance of keeping management informed and involved, and the need to match the investment level with the desired automation objectives. He highlights technical issues such as attending to testware architecture early, encouraging reuse to reduce maintenance costs, and scripting quality. By studying the experience of others, you can implement test automation with a deeper understanding of the important issues, mitigate its risks, and capitalize on your opportunities.
Learn more about
Mark Fewster
W16
Agile Testing
The Tester’s Role in Agile Planning
Rob Sabourin, AmiBug.com
If testers sit passively through agile planning, important testing activities will be missed or glossed over. Testing late in the sprint becomes a bottleneck, quickly diminishing the advantages of agile development. However, testers can actively advocate for customers’ concerns while helping the team implement robust solutions. Rob Sabourin shows how testers contribute to the estimation, task definition, clarification, and the scoping work required to implement user stories. Testers apply their elicitation skills to understand what users need, collecting great examples that explore typical, alternate, and error scenarios. Rob shares many examples of how agile stories can be broken into a variety of test-related tasks for implementing infrastructure, data, non-functional attributes, privacy, security, robustness, exploration, regression, and business rules. Rob shares his experiences helping transform agile testers from passive planning participants into dynamic advocates who address the product owner’s critical business concerns, the team’s limited resources, and the project’s technical risks.
Learn more about
Rob Sabourin
W17
The Cloud
Software Testing in the Cloud: Issues and Opportunities
Scott Tilley, Florida Institute of Technology
Cloud computing offers virtualized hardware, unlimited storage, and built-in software services that can aid in reducing the execution time of large test suites. However, migrating software testing to the cloud is not a trivial activity nor is it necessarily the best solution to all testing problems. Using real-world case studies conducted at the Florida Institute of Technology, Scott Tilley describes the issues and opportunities of software testing in the cloud. He explains how the SMART-T decision framework they use can support your migration process. Scott shows how to realize significant time savings using HadoopUnit, a cloud-based distributed environment for concurrent execution of test cases, which builds upon the Hadoop open-source platform. Leave with a better understanding of when cloud computing is a solution to your software testing problems and when it’s not.
Learn more about
Scott Tilley
W18
Special Topics
Surviving an FDA Audit: Heuristics for Exploratory Testing
Griffin Jones, Congruent Compliance, LLC
In FDA-regulated industries, audits are high-stakes, fact-finding exercises required to verify compliance to regulations and an organization’s internal procedures. Although exploratory testing has emerged as a powerful test approach within regulated industries, an audit is the impact point where exploratory testing and regulatory worlds collide. Griffin Jones describes a heuristic model—Congruence, Honesty, Competence, Appropriate Process Model, Willingness, Control, and Evidence—his team used to survive such an audit. You, too, can use this model to prepare for an audit or to baseline your current practices for a test improvement program. Griffin highlights the common misconceptions and traps to avoid with exploratory testing in regulated industries. Avoid mutual misunderstandings that can trigger episodes of incongruous behavior and an unsuccessful audit. Learn how to maintain your composure during a stressful audit and leave with valuable heuristics to help you organize and present your exploratory testing results with confidence.
Learn more about
Griffin Jones
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